Today, we have reserved a guest post for Jan De Blonde who is very actively engaged in sustainable farmland investment abroad. Jan is ...
My friend the equity racehorse sent me me the following interesting link which appeared on Dutch television and which basically ...
Vorige zondag (6 mei 2012) verscheen het volgend interview in De Zondag:
Elk jaar omtrent deze tijd publiceert BP zijn Statistical Review of World Energy. Bijna 50 pagina’s grotendeels gevuld met tabellen ...
Door een abrupt beëindigde skivakantie (nauwelijks 50 meter op de latten gestaan) bracht ik de rest van de week haast immobiel en al ...
Well, it's not exactly Moody's but more precisely Fitch, sending out messages which are "surprising" to say the least. Remember ...
Davos, setting of the Thomas Mann novel "Der Zauberberg" and sheltering famous people throughout history such as ...
Following our adventures in today's every changing moods in the world of finance, it's not a bad thing to assess volatility as a ...
You may remember I wrote a piece on Asia Pacific Breweries (APB) , Heineken and Fraser & Neave (F&N) when I was in Singapore earlier ...
My dear friend Sideshow Bob sent me a short note which I think deserves some attention. It opens up the discussion on one of the most ...
Geen kat die deze stelling zal betwisten, maar de impact ervan op de Chinese economie wordt vermoedelijk zwaar onderschat. We hebben ...
De kogel is door de kerk, iedereen van ons kan straks aandeelhouder van Facebook worden. Intekenen op een IPO is echter niet altijd ...
Apple kwam de afgelopen week met de langverwachte medeling over hun spaarpot van 100 miljard $. Een mogelijke overname is nog niet in ...
On March 14th, the Media Innovation Center was launched (under the wings of the IBBT) and baptized 'Mix'. Its goal is to support and ...
Yesterday Fitch released a report with some arithmetics and outlook on the ageing population and how the developed west so far has ...
According to the World Economic Forum, Canadian banks have been ranked as the soundest and most safe banks world-wide, this for 5 ...
Gemini, the immortal twins Castor and Pollux, in this case Dublin and Cork. We picked up an interesting story from out of Bloomberg ...
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Cyprus and the bail-out. Excuse me, depositors' "bail-in" deal and the visit to the hairdresser. About the rescue package and the fact that private savings' accounts are partially confiscated, already a lot of criticism has arisen. Economic sense or nonsense ? Or are other major forces at work here ? On the deal itself, it's a ...
Today we learned that Belgium is still a global leader in government in governmental support of the economy when it comes to the budget. An sich this should not be a problem, provided you get something in return for what you pay for. Reality however strikes hard and even with this 51% governmental occupation on the economy - even ...
When the Roman Catholic Church meets Ferrari meets the "Left", what do you get ? Because that's in a nutshell what is currently happening in Italy, "progressive" forces seeking change and joining forces. At first sight, they truly make an odd couple trio. Mind you, the majority of Maranello based Ferrari employees ...
In the age of new-speak and political lexicon, the Dutch show us the way by banning that ugly austerity word and replacing it by a more social acceptable term like "modernization" and "building bridges". And above "de moerdijk", that implies some EUR 16 bio of "modern" savings, ie EUR 1,000/capita or roughly 2,5% of GDP. In the ...
This week we came across a nice article by Laurence Kotlikoff. The guy isn't exactly popular in the US because some time ago, he calculated that the true fiscal cliff is "slightly" larger than foreseen : the true US national debt is about $211 trillion instead of $14 trillion. But this time, Kotlikoff strikes quite hard when ...
Before giving a brief comment on what has been decided upon today, a quick quiz show. Who is quoted for the following statement earlier this week : "Markets are not allowed to run wild and must serve the people rather than the other way around. When we look at international markets over the last five years, then we see that ...
Just when you thought you were safe, a last minute move from our dear friends in the US are spoiling the party. Moody's lowered the outlook to"negative" for the AAA ratings of Germany, the Netherlands and Luxembourg (!). Yes,you read this well, even our friends over in Luxembourg - with only 3 government bond ...
Today, the following manifesto appeared in the blog sphere : "In support of a European banking union, done properly - a manifesto by economists in Germany, Austria and Switzerland". For the link, I would like to refer to : http://www.voxeu.org/article/manifesto-banking-union-economists-germany-austria-and-switzerland The ...
Yesterday we had triple whammy : 28 Spanish banks dramatically downgraded & Moodys threatening to cut the Spanish sovereign to junk ; then came the news that Monte dei Paschi will be bailed by the Italian government through means of so-called Tremonti bonds. And finally the presentation of Herman Van Rompuy's 7 page road map ...
Catharsis, the emotional purification in Greek drama or the logical conclusion at the end of a play. It seems to me we are nearing such a point in the euro-zone where conflicting parties - now in full collision course in a super game of chicken - will be blessed with catharsis one way or the other. What is at stake ?In previous ...
Coincidentally or not, but emerging markets from very different angles have crossed my path over the past 24 hours. I have been to a presentation of a major fund manager today, looked upon various CDS premia world-wide and came across the 2 main leading articles in the latest Bloomberg magazine which both focus on the outlook for ...
"The art of taxation consists in so plucking the goose as to obtain the largest possible amount of feathers with the smallest possible amount of hissing" Jean Baptiste Colbert (1619-83), Finance Minister du Roi Soleil One of the "file rouges" and my personal pre-occupations during the current financial & sovereign ...
The jury is out and it seems 800 banks in Europe opted to join in the free ride provided by the ECB, and this for an amount of 530 bio EUR. That lifts the total liquidity injection covered by LTRO1 and 2 at 1,019 bio EUR. And the balance sheet of the ECB will move from 2,733 bio towards 3,263 bio EUR with a capital cushion of ...
Yesterday, leading rating agency Standard & Poor's maintained its credit rating for Japan at AA-. And although the state of public finance should give some reason for concern, S&P nevertheless is quite confident that Japan's future current account will be sufficient in the black in order to absorb the domestic funding needs. Well, ...
Before turning to our little soccer game - which the Swiss supervisors apparently seem to be losing - we like to turn one more time to what is happening over in Frankfurt. After the successful LTRO of last December (489 bio EUR cash injection into banks), a new round of auctioning is heating up for 29/02. And it seems we are gonna ...
When the going gets tough, the tough usually gets going. In the case of the sovereign debt crisis, we have the Greek discussions with private creditors coming to a halt and a March deadline coming up (will the IMF grant a new tranche of loans ?). In the US, we are getting prepared for a repetition of the debt ceiling debate of late ...
We in Europe - the old continent - have taken notice since late Friday that our credibility as a debtor has been put into question. We were warned earlier that something was waiting to happen. Now that it has materialized, I nevertheless have some questions running through my mind lately, based upon the following fundamentals ...
Iemand betalen om je geld gedurende lange tijd bij te houden, geen zinnig mens zou dat doen, en toch is het wat deze week opnieuw met meerdere miljarden gebeurde.Duitsland sleet voor bijna 4 miljard aan obligaties en doordat de uitgifte boven pari gebeurde zorgde een lage intrestvoet ervoor dat de crediteur op vervaldatum per saldo ...
With the recent change in FED "speak" strategy, more transparent communication and the new composition of voting members within the FOMC - kingdom of the doves and the last hawk having left the building - market speculation is rising that a new round of QE3 will be announced very soon. On the desirability of such a new program and ...
Onze vorige post over de nieuwe fiscale regels voor de Eurozone (het "Fiscal Compact") stelde dat de "nieuwe regels" (o.a. de beperking van begrotingstekorten tot 3% van het BNP) nauwelijks verschillen van de "oude regels" van het Groei- en Stabiliteitspact (GSP). Het GSP werd niet nageleefd en voorzag geen prikkels voor ...
Earlier this week, we mentioned the rally on high yield European short term government bonds in anticipation of Wednesday's ECB LTRO auctioning (Long Term Refinancing Operation). Markets had expected something in the range of 300-400 bio EUR. The final result was 489 bio EUR spread over 523 bidders, on average almost 1 bio EUR per ...
Today the kick-off of probably thé most important meeting in the history of the single currency so far. Its survival is at stake and the players are bound to sit around the table to have a final shoot out. So pretty soon "Rien ne va plus" and all bets are made. Let's have a game ourselves and throw dices. In this simple game with ...
Cry wolf or false alarm. Or the so-called "cry wolf effect" : if you regularly repeat false alarm, how long will it take before your warning loses all credibility ? The last couple of months, we had all sorts of cry-wolf reports coming from doom specialists and various broker reports. It usually refers to the USD, gold mania or ...
Today I overheard a would-be minister of our next government expressing concern about our budget. And it seems that if it's up to him, a budget control will be executed on a quarterly basis to check whether we are still on track. Well that would just be great, wouldn't it ? next ?No. When hearing these words, I had 3 automatic ...
At the Econopolis Economic Encounters on 28/11, we had the pleasure to have Nouriel Roubini - Dr Doom & Gloom - and Ivan Van De Cloot, Chief Economist of Thinktank Itinera. Both were asked to pinpoint the state of play of the current financial crisis, their short & long term expectations and recommendations on the way forward. Dr ...
